Gordon Gee formally appointed West Virginia University president

Former Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee was formally approved as the permanent president of West Virginia University Monday.

The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission approved his appointment at a special meeting, the final approval needed to solidify his role, according to a WVU release.

The Board of Governors unanimously voted to name Gee president during an emergency meeting March 3 after the Presidential Search Committee endorsed Gee for the position in an emergency session of its own Feb. 28.

Gee began as WVU’s president in January and was only set to remain in that position until a permanent president was selected. He is on an unpaid leave from OSU, where he assumed the role of president emeritus after retiring.

Chair of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission Bruce Berry said he is excited for Gee to be the president.

“President Gee is a vibrant leader with unmatched credentials whose homecoming has been warmly welcomed at West Virginia University,” Berry said in a released statement. “We look forward to working closely with President Gee and the entire campus as we strive to increase opportunities for our students and expand the positive impact of higher education on West Virginia’s communities.”

Gee said Monday he, too, is looking forward to being the permanent WVU president.

“I am deeply honored and very energized to return to West Virginia University as the 24th president,” Gee said in a released statement. “As most people know, this is the university and the state that gave me my first opportunity to lead a major university – and I am as passionate today as I was then to make a difference in the lives of our citizens.

“I thank the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission for its support today, and look forward to working with the Commission to advance the mission of our great university in the years ahead.”

OSU spokesman Gary Lewis said in an email Feb. 28 questions about whether Gee would remain on unpaid leave at OSU if he was approved as WVU’s permanent president “will be answered over the next few weeks.”

Lewis said in an email March 3 those questions are “still pending,” and as of Monday evening, Lewis was not immediately able to say if they have been answered yet.

Gee is set to have a two-year contract at WVU that will go into effect July 1 and the details of which are still being finalized, according to the release.

As interim president, his annual salary at WVU was $450,000.

Gee earned slightly less than $1.9 million in the 2011-12 fiscal year at OSU. Gee’s base salary as president emeritus and a tenured professor in the OSU Moritz College of Law, his new position at OSU post-retirement, was set to be $410,000, to be paid each year from 2013 through June 2018.

Gee began his career of leading higher education institutions at WVU in 1981. He was the dean of WVU’s law school prior to his four-year stint as president.

West Virginia University is located in Morgantown, W.Va., and had about 29,500 students enrolled during Fall Semester 2013.

Gee later was president at Brown University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Colorado, and he held the office twice at OSU.

Gee was OSU’s president from 1990-97 and from 2007 to July 1, when he retired.

Gee announced his decision to retire from OSU days after controversial comments he made at a Dec. 5, 2012, OSU Athletic Council meeting came under public scrutiny. Remarks about Notre Dame and the Southeastern Conference in particular brought national attention.

Gee said in December he did not intend to pursue WVU’s permanent presidency.

“The role that I’m playing precludes me from even thinking about it,” Gee said in an interview with The Lantern. “My interest is of being of service and being helpful.”

Gee told The Lantern in October he was not planning on pursuing another university presidency.

“This is my home, and look, I’ve done this longer than any person in this country, and I’ve had the greatest opportunities at the greatest institution one could possibly imagine. But I’m really committed to making a difference by doing what I’m doing now, by actually being engaged in this university family but also engaged in and talking about the issues of higher education,” Gee said.

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Almost everyone is too young to recall, though Reagan was involved in high-profile conflicts with the protest movements of the late 60s era. On May 15, 1969, during the People’s Park protests at UC Berkeley, Reagan sent the California Highway Patrol and other officers to quell the protests, in an incident that became known as “Bloody Thursday”, resulting in the death of student James Rector and the blinding of carpenter Alan Blanchard. Reagan then called out 2,200 state National Guard troops to occupy the city of Berkeley for two weeks to crack down on the protesters.A year after “Bloody Thursday”, Reagan responded to questions about campus protest movements saying, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.”

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth, right? the Democrats’ great accomplishment is producing the political equivalent of a Rodney King video, clearly demonstrating the lies of the right, the right Hilary Clinton correctly identified as a vast conspiracy. Confirm by examining Central District of California Cases, 01-4340, 03-9097, 08-5515, 10-5193, US Tax Court 12000-07L –though I think you want to view my US Tax Court Appeal to the 9th Circuit for a good account of their day to day assaults, a few month time slice indicative of a decade of assault, and 9th Circuit case 11-56043.
Typically operating through Puppets–including puppets in the judiciary–the right wing has for decades been committing crimes and trying to classify them to cover them up, a move explicitly forbidden by the Code of Federal Regulations. The right has accomplished its political objectives by presenting a fraction of the evidence to judicial officials who, having seen the pattern dozens of times before, could not help but realize that they were being presented with incomplete and inaccurate information. With either the willfully blind approval or the willful ignorance of the judiciary the right has killed & stolen several of my pets and routinely shoot energy weaponry at me and my pets, despite my calls to the police, the FBI, Congress, and despite my petitions in court. There is really only one solution, and that’s to disempower them politically.